From Latin ‘alter’ – another. Alterity, difference, difference; having the status or ability to be different and unassimilable by any representation system.
Usually the alterity means what is different from a dominant point of view and has thus been (and probably still is) devalued, denied, and marginalized. Marginality and unassailability are decisive for the alterity. What is understood today by the terms “alternative” and “alterity” is in some ways close to what Peirce calls “secondness.”
The highly abstract category of otherness is often focused on a practical and even political focus. It is usually used to draw attention to something that has been excluded or marginalized from the dominant discourse of Western culture. Western humanism is based on the supposed similarity of all human beings, but in practice, it has not served all people equally well. Those who are different from (or different from) the dominant images of the dominant discourses have been excluded or discredited. The rhetoric of otherness has become stronger as a way of overcoming these exclusions and marginalizations – there is a life experience different from that of men, heterosexuals, whites, or Europeans. These “differences” deserve to be heard; their experience is not necessarily, or even similar, the same as the one that has historically dominated.
Today, the emphasis has shifted from universals (what is supposed to be true for all “people”) to individuals (what coincides with the experience of a particular group), from similarity, homogeneity, and the individual to alterity, difference, and multiplicity.
